September, 2014:
Lots of new Players Sightings on my blog! Do you have a new
sighting? Send me a note!

November 9th, 2008: First Gathering of the
growing Southern California HGG Chapter at the new Palmdale home of Jose
Luis Garmenzzi, who cooked us a marvelous seafood dish I can't even
pronounce, let alone spell. It took us awhile to get the harp
guitars out, as we first made Jose take out all of his couple dozen
guitars and other odd strings which we passed around for quite awhile!
L-R: Me with Dyer, Kathy Wingert with Wingert #4, Pete Bradshaw with
Wingert #3, Jose Garmenzzi borrowing my Knutsen (his Hewett was in the
shop), Frank Doucette with Wingert #1 (do you spot a trend here?).

July 19, 2008,
New Plymouth, New Zealand:
Our own Harp Guitar Dreams' Tim Donahue (far left) cements his
"rock star" status with a crowning success at a major new stadium guitar
festival in NZ. While all the other guitar gods (like Joe Satriani
and Vernon Reid, above) played with full bands, Tim was all alone with his
solo electric harp guitar - and survived! Garry Sharpe-Young, the G-TARanaki
Festival promoter is next to Tim.

Summer, 2008 (various locales):
John Doan continues to expand the audience of the harp guitar this year
with his very visible appearances with the legendary Mason Williams
(left).

Photo by Michael SimmonsAugust 17-19, 2007: Santa Rosa, CA:
The Healdsburg Guitar Festival (Gregg Miner visiting with Fred Carlson).
I finally had an excuse to go to this great event when Duane Noble asked
me to play his new harp guitar for his short demo concert.More photos here.

August 5, 2007: Los Angeles: Multi-instumentalist
composer and new
harp guitarist Jose Luis Garmenzzistopped by the house to meet Frank Doucette
and me to show off his new custom Jim Hewett harp guitar with 27 strings.
The design and layout of the trebles was Jose's idea, after seeing Pat
Metheny play his Picasso.The three L.A. harp guitarists historic first
meeting.

Jim demonstrates his
remarkable "kit" arch harp guitar.

Fred gives it a spin.

April 13/14th, 2007:
Mill Valley, CA Harp Guitar Summit! Jeff Titus (left photo, far
right) gave a special double bill concert with solo bass virtuoso
Michael Manring. My wife Jaci and I (Gregg Miner, at left) drove
up to sit it on one tune. Fred Carlson (holding
Oracle, the harp sympitar he built for Jeff) made the show as well and
we made a night of it at Jeff's place. By dumb luck, French
arch-harp-guitarist James Kline was in the area, having played his own
house concert at Alan Perlman's (who built his instrument). The
next day we all got together for harp guitar playing, test-driving, and
visiting (this was our first face-to-face with Jim).

The month prior I had driven up
with a Chinese gu zheng to lay a part down on Wood Dragon
for Jeff's upcoming CD. It's gonna be great!

March 27-28, 2007, Gregg & Jaci's home, CA: John
and Deirdra Doan stopped over after John'sCarlsbad Museum performanceand other Southern Cal gigs. He treated me to
about half the Sor pieces from his upcoming harpolyre recording
project and about half the tunes from his upcoming solo harp guitar
CD (trust me, these are going to be two "must-haves" for guitar fans!).
More harpolyre pics on the
Miner Museum Visitors page. He also gave me a free
nail maintenance session, which did
improve my tone, to say nothing of our relationship.

Feb 9, 2007, Altadena, CA:
Acoustic Eidolon, the husband and wife duo of Joe Scott on guitar and
Hannah Alkire on cello made a rare appearance in my neck of the woods (at the
Coffee Gallery Backstage), and Frank Doucette and I finally had a chance
to see and hear Joe’s unique “guitjo” up close and personal. While not a
harp guitar (nor Joe a harp guitarist), it is by no means a simple
double-neck guitar either. In practice, Joe plays his unique custom
invention like a harp guitar about half the time – in that he taps and
plucks the main 7-string open-tuned guitar neck entirely with his left
hand, while his right hand plays melodies or arpeggio figures on the
7-string “harp” neck, which is tuned partly diatonically. At other times
he uses his left hand to touch the 12th-fret harmonics as he
plucks the harp strings, occasionally fretting notes on this neck to fill
remaining notes to play an entire melody. It is quite complicated to
watch, but beautiful to hear! His new electric version, made by Rich
Mermer (who attended HGG4), sounded almost like a harpsichord at times.
Hannah, a very versatile, classically-trained cellist, is a perfect fit
with Joe’s colorful guitar and guitjo techniques. You can see several
video clips demonstrating this on their web site.

February 1, 2007: An
intimate harp guitar summit occurred when Andy McKee coincidently showed
up in Los Angeles the very day of Stephen Bennett’s first Southern Cal
concert. Stephen and I were prepping for our Museum of Making Music gala opening night, while
Mister-2-million-YouTube-hits McKee was in town for his appearance on the
Carson Daly show. The two seminal harp guitarists were also
instrumental in a recent special event close to my heart. Sorry
- this is a Harpguitars.net Members Only Special
Feature: The Miner Museum
Acquires Important Rare Specimens

Oct 4, 2006; San Diego: During a
private client demo at
Fine Guitar Consultants, 6-string wiz Laurence Juber gave
delighted listeners a demonstration of the unique Shimo harp guitar (in
Gallery 6), which is being offered through Richard Glick’s
service.

November, 2006: Tim Donahue, back in Japan after
his amazing debut at HGG4, gets back to work, playing on a live concert
broadcast....but with a "normal" harp guitar! Did we rub off on him,
I wonder?

September 10, 2006: Doc Watson tickles
the super-trebles on John Doan's Elliott/Sullivan harp guitar while
backstage at the North Park Theater in San Diego during the filming of
"Primal Twang - The Legacy of the Guitar" PBS special. After
blazing through some incredible licks on the neck following with a
thunderous bass line he stops abruptly and asks, "Where do you get one
of these things?" Soon after Doan plays a tune for Doc and he
says, "I have no idea where I have been for the past several minutes!
What incredible music you make!"

September, 2006: This is not
exactly a player, but a major harp guitar sighting nevertheless.
Giovanni Intelisano (author of the book on Mozzani) kindly sent these
images of their latest exhibit in the province of Ferrara, Italy.
His colleage, guitar expert Lorenzo Frignani, negotiated the acquisition
of a permanent collection
of 32 of Mozzani's instruments, and they are undergoing restoration
and then display in various locations as Le chitarre di Luigi Mozzani: un
liutaio centese 1869-1943.

July
15th, 2006: Alex de
Grassi invited Fred Carlson to visit his Weekend
Guitar Workshop
to discuss his latest harp guitar creation with the students. As my
wife Jaci and I happened to be staying with Fred that weekend (I was
picking up my instruments - see below), Alex agreed to let me crash the
party, and then invited Jeff Titus to make it a whole
harp guitar evening!

June 25, 2006: That's our own Joe Morgan
playing his Sedgwick with partner David Moran at the Summer Solstice
Festival in Calabasas CA. I missed it, being up in Tacoma.
Frank Doucette attended with his wife Christa and my wife Jaci.

June 22, 2006: While Jaci ditched
me to stay home and visit with Joe (that's a vacation?) I
went up to the GAL convention in Tacoma solo. Fortunately I didn't
have to get up in front of 300 guitar aficionados solo in Thursday
night's concert - I shared with the stage with my friend and artistic
guru Fred Carlson (playing the New Dream). I just love this
picture.Photo by Jon Peterson, 2006.
Used by permission of the Guild of American Luthiers.

April 1, 2006: Muriel Anderson played the
Pocahontas County Opera House in Marlinton, West Virginia, and
invited local boy Stacy Hobbs up to do some Dyer duets (two Style
7's that Stacy now owns).

December, 2005: I received the
following email from Tim Donahue in Japan. Nice to see him returning to
his electric harp guitar!

Tim says, "...I've been terribly busy with
harp guitar concerts in Japan (some pics attached), and things have been
busy but great. The new fretless/fretted harp guitar music is
otherworldly.
Season's Greetings from
Japan, Tim Donahue
P.S. Update w/news about the recent harp guitar tour at:www.timdonahue.net"

| copyright 2004 | Wildner AG

October,
2005: For about a year now, I have been following a special recording
and performance project by two “temporary” harp guitarists.

Thanks to Klaus Wildner for sharing his
instruments on the Hauser site,my
site, with
live audiences, and coming soon, on CD!
In addition, an article on the duo appeared in Akustik
Gitarre, 4/05, where they talk about the quint’s “mad sustain!”(thanks to Michael Simmons for a copy).

September 29,
2005: Karla Fisher attended a house concert at the home of Mike Doolin
in Portland. The event was centered around a new 19-course nylon string
harp guitar built by Alan Perlman, along the lines of his previous
arch-guitars for James Kline. Alan flew up from San Francisco (with the
HG in its own seat by the window) so that John Doan and others could
test drive it before it was delivered to the new owner on the East
Coast. Pictured (l-r) are luthier Jeffrey Elliott, John and Alan. Additional
photos by Karla here.

August 13, 2005: John
Doan visits the guitar exhibit of the Nordic Guitar Festival (where he
performed). Here, he holds an authentic c.1800 Swedish Lute, exhibited
by Sällskapet Svenska Lutan,
makers of the modern lute-guitar style Swedish lute.

March 26, 2005: Steve Sedwick sent
in this photo of Dan LaVoie and Andy McKee standing outside the
Troubadour in London. Steve writes:

"They performed at this legendary club
where Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and many others
haveplayed. They were bloody amazing."

Dec 24, 2004

Our
German friend Rainer Krause (a collector and owner of many harp guitars)
sent this greeting for the Holidays:

"I
want to wish you a merry, merry Christmas and a happy new year from Berlin.
Here is a photograph of two friends, which was taken about two
years ago (we are playing two Friedrich Schenk harp guitars). On the left
side is a friend from Switzerland who has a Zithermuseum (Lorenz Mühlemann),
and on the right side is a well known banjo player and expert from
Berlin (Heiner Thomas).
With kind regards,
Rainer Krause"

Dec 11, 2004: Andy McKee writes:

"Hey
guys. I just got back from Taiwan a couple days ago and this time, I took a
picture of the banner outside of the Open Strings music shop in TaoYuen.
Also in the banner is Belgian guitarist Jacques Stotzem. Like I mentioned at
the HG Gathering, about 11 million people live in Taipei county so the HG is
definitely getting seen by a few people!
Rock on,
Andy"

Oct 17, 2004

Belgian photographer Lou Giroud has a gallery
of his work where I stumbled across this photo he snapped of a busking harp
guitarist - our own James Kline of France.

Oct 3, 2004

Bill
Dutcher, Eric Loy and newcomer to the HG world, Brian Henke, just completed
their first joint gig in Dayton, Ohio, shown here in a photo sent in by
Bill, who adds:

"Brian
played 3 compositions on the HG. He's still searching for a way to amplify
it as he played into a mic at the show. It's a strange looking beast!
He coordinates a fundraiser for the homeless every year in December in
Cleveland, Ohio called the Woodchopper's Ball. He has 12 players involved: 4
on stage at a time each going round-robin playing three songs each. It works
out to 3 one-hour sets. Loy, Henke and I will be the only harp players
involved. I've done it several times over the years and it's really a
blast."

Bill
has since relocated to Scottsdale, Arizona. Let's hope the Harp Guitar
Mini-Gatherings can continue in both states!

Dec 28, 2002

The elusive Mickey Fischer, at the Sweetwater Saloon
Saturday Open Mic in Mill Valley, CA

The site's caption reads: "Micky
Fischer blew me away with his technique; he played the harp and guitar
at the same time! He also played a tune on his zither. On top of it all
he makes his instruments! Whoa!"

Fall, 2001

Fred Carlson at the 2001 Guild of American
Luthiers Convention in Tacoma, WA.

Fred
writes, “This is Mel Vessel's take on the one-armed guitar (though
I imagine that Mel may never have known about one-armed guitars. This
is a great example of creative innocence in action!). Sort of a
"one-legged guitar," or maybe a "long-tailed guitar.”
No harp strings, just a funky six-stringer with a big ol' tail. He
made a case for it, too!”

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